Cuellar: We’ve Bused Migrants for a While Because We Don’t Have the Resources, ‘I Have Some of the Poorest Counties’ in the U.S.

On Saturday’s broadcast of CNN’s “Smerconish,” Rep. Henry Cuellar (D-TX) said the transporting of migrants by Govs. Ron DeSantis (R-FL), Greg Abbott (R-TX), and Doug Ducey (R-AZ) is being done for publicity, but pointed out that his district has “some of the poorest counties in the whole country, and for somebody to say that we have the infrastructure, we don’t have the NGOs strong enough to handle everything. That’s why we’re sending these folks outside of Laredo” and have been doing so for a while.

Cuellar said, “Look, we know exactly what they’re doing. They’re doing this to get publicity, and it is working. But I also understand the frustration that we’ve been feeling down here along the border. By the way, they might send two buses to Washington, D.C., they might send two buses to New York. I want you to know that, in Laredo, every day, we send out 26 buses, either by ICE or NGOs that go to cities in the state of Texas or even go outside the state of Texas to some of those cities. We send out 26 buses a day, and that doesn’t include — Laredo is only one out of the nine Border Patrol sectors. So, we’ve been feeling this frustration for a long time.”

He continued, “I did notice that the Mayor of D.C. said — made a comment yesterday that Washington, D.C. was not a border town and we don’t have the infrastructure, they don’t have the infrastructure. We have some — I have some of the poorest counties in the whole country, and for somebody to say that we have the infrastructure, we don’t have the NGOs strong enough to handle everything. That’s why we’re sending these folks outside of Laredo and the border town. … The city of Laredo, this is a Democratic area, a year ago, sent out buses because they were releasing migrants in the streets of Laredo. So, the city of Laredo started sending the buses over to Dallas and Houston. And the Houston mayor called up and said, whoa, whoa, you can’t send them over to us. So, the city of Laredo has been doing this — has done this for at least a year or two.”

Cuellar added, “The border’s not secure, with all due respect to the VP.”

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